Working in the various fields of education and technology, I’m constantly reminded that we need to be life long learners. In that spirit, I’m sharing something I learnt this week that solved a real world business need for me and hopefully is of use to the readers of this blog.
Visualising Data
I’ve admitted before I’m a sucker for a great data visualisation, be that in Microsoft PowerBI or it’s longstanding predecessor: Microsoft Excel. In this case, I was really keen to try and create a risk assessment heat map that would allow me to easily manipulate data points on the heatmap as the risk changed over time. In particular, I wanted to use a visual that would ‘tell a story’ quickly for my bosses that were needing to absorb a lot of data very quickly and did not want to read a bunch of text bullet points that told that story.
Doing some digging online, there was a variety of different ways to achieve this but I wanted to keep it simple and easy to maintain (nod to this clip that eventually pointed me down this pathway).
Create Excel Risk Heatmap in 5minutes
Keeping with the theme that a picture tells a thousand words, here is my 5minute walk through video on creating the heatmap:
Download My Example
My example is super basic, but it may be all you need to get started yourself. To that end, here is my example created in the video for you to download if you choose:
So there you have it – a very simple way to create a cool visualisation in Excel to tell a story about risk assessment on a heatmap. Trust this was useful for you!
Your idea and generosity just saved me in a job here. Great and thank you very much. Flamary Coutinho, Ruio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Glad it was helpful! Cheers, Sam
Sam how do you show actual risk and target on the same page with arrows like you have ? I need to show actual and targeted only.
Hey Mike,
The example right at the outset was a screenshot from something I found on the internet that already had the arrows included. I strongly suspect this was not created in Excel in the same way I did (Likely a PPT with some arrows would be the fastest way to create I reckon).
cheers
Sam
Thanks!! I see your risks with the same scores are only showing once. I have a few with the same scores – and ideas how to show this?